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redirected from Main.ConservationOfNinjitsu
alt title(s): Conservation Of Ninjitsu; Inverse Ninja Law "Anyway, fighting off a dozen ninjas is easy. It's when you run into one ninja that you know you're in trouble."
"You wanna fight? There's only one ninja left, that means I'm death incarnate!" - Order Of The Stick
In any martial arts fight, there is only a finite amount of ninjutsu available to each side in a given encounter. As a result, one Ninja is a deadly threat, but an army of them are cannon fodder.
This is also known as The Law of Inverse Ninja Strength : Threat = 1/N, where N = number of Ninjas or other "Elite Adversaries".
This can apply to Elite Mooks other than ninjas; vampires, for example, are particularly susceptible to Conservation Of Ninjitsu, as are werewolves, alien monsters, Special Forces commandos, and Super Powered Robot Meter Maids. Zombies seem to be exempt from this. This is because they are not considered elite fighters: without the element of surprise, they're mainly dangerous because they travel in packs, and with each victim they overtake, their ranks swell.
The effects of this trope are more severe on less individualized groups of ninjas, such that 3 of essentially the same guy has an adjusted ninjutsu of about 4.1.
Extra points if, when presented with their multiple adversaries, one character makes note that, "We barely were able to handle one, how on earth are we going to handle this many?", right before proceeding to successfully do just that.
A.K.A. Inverse Ninja Law. See also Strong As They Need To Be, The Worf Effect. A reason why the Zerg Rush fails.
Examples:'
Anime/Manga
- Naruto takes it to new heights. Not only do minions and other extras actively exhibit the trope, but the titular character himself possesses the ability to make a good 1000+ clones of himself. To that point, if he creates 1-5, they're usually the key to his victory, but almost any time he goes over 10 or so (which turns out to be his most common strategy), they turn into cannon fodder, as their main weakness is that they usually go poof with just one hit.
- The "Uzumaki Barrage" attack seems to avoid this trope since it relies more on the simple physical weight of the clones rather than their martial arts skill. It still fails more often than not, though.
- Naruto also has the textbook example of the individualism corollary: in one of the two small-group battles (this editor can think of off the top of his head) that don't eventually get whittled down to a one-on-one, the main Power Trio and The Mole manage to beat an outnumbered group of narratively identical, visualy near-identical opponents.
- Post-Time Skip, after his Character Development frees him from being an Idiot Hero, this blind multi-clone rush becomes a viable strategy, as Naruto realizes that he learns everything his clones learn. So, he charges an enemy with five or so clones, learns their strategies, and formulates his own plan.
- Ironically, the Shadow Clone jutsu itself seems to be a skill possessed by only a few, extremely badass ninja (everyone else has to settle for lesser kinds of Clones). Thus, the most effective way to personally apply the Law of Ninjitsu Conservation is itself conserved.
- The show makes note of this trope: The standard squad is made up of four ninja. Kakashi says that any more an the team starts getting slow, clunky, and disorganized. A bigger team is worse at completing missions than a smaller one. Plus, any ninja that stands alone is pretty much Bad Ass enough to beat an entire squad.
- The most blatant aspect of this seems to be the utility of generic village ninjas. In Konoha, possession of a vest shows that one is at least a mid-rank ninja, and Ninja seems to lose their individualistic garb and trend towards the village uniform as they become high ranked. However, every battle in Konoha where the generic village ninjas appear results in them dying in droves without using any interesting techniques, showing that having a name matters.
- Sasuke seems to be Genre Savvy to this: after his Face Heel Turn he almost always fights alone and thus would die if he failed. However, Plot Armor prevents his death, and thus he almost always wins, contrast before when he was starting to fall to The Worf Effect.
- Naruto's clones being weaker is justified to some extent because he has to split his chakra among his different bodies, making them all weaker than he is alone.
- Which still doesn't explain why he can make one hundred clones, get whittled down to just himself, and win anyway.
- Ninja Scroll: Jubei eliminates ninja after ninja flunky with prototypical displays of gushing High Pressure Blood. Only the Eight Devils of Kimon can give him a challenge; all others die with pathetic ease.
- Played with in Ninin Ga Shinobuden, where Shinobu's fellow ninjas are faceless mooks who can't do anything right.
- Anyone in Dragonball who possessed the ability to duplicate themselves usually followed a similar rule.
- The creator of the Division technique actually gets criticized by his rival for creating a move with such a debilitating flaw.
- Hellsing does use this. The Hellsing Organisation's operatives mop the floor with masses of enemy ghouls but find more trouble in dealing with lone strong vampires. However, there is also a lot of subversion. Seras assisted Alucard against the lone Tubalcain Alhambra and helped her side win instead of making the odds worse, as the Inverse Ninja Law would have. Similarly, when Alexander makes his one-man charge towards Alucard and a newly-summoned army of familiars in a later part of the story, he finds that the numbers actually are to Alucard's advantage and it takes reinforcements to save him.
- Played straight before being subverted in Zone Of The Enders: Idolo. The titular Orbital Frame is highly effective against small groups of LEVs, but is eventually taken down by concentrated fire from an overwhelming number of the same.
- Actually, not. This troper recalls it being revealed in Zone of the Enders: Dolores, i, that the pilot stopped fighting out of a combination of grief from his dead girlfriend's body being brought into the cockpit, and awe at what seemed to be her ghost (actually her sentience absorbed by the machine which would later be split in half when the salvage was used to make two different machines,) hugging him in the cockpit. Even then, and considering the fact that Idolo was a prototype (and actually significantly weaker than later unique Orbital Frames such as Anubis and Jehuty), it still took a massive application of overwhelming firepower to destroy the Frame. (And even then, the pilot survived!) Orbital Frames sure are tough.
- Bleach employs this trope constantly, but perhaps the most glaring example occurs in the Soul Society arc. Ichigo, after barely surviving a duel with Squad 6 lieutenant Renji Abarai, defeats three other lieutenants in a matter of seconds without using his sword just a few episodes later (granted, he has just been through some intense training and one of the lieutenants is from the medical 4th Squad). Subverted by Aizen, who is pretty much untouchable regardless of how few or many people he's up against.
- Somewhat justified in that case, however, as Renji is portrayed as far stronger than an average lieutenant, to the point of having a Bankai.
- Subverted in End of Evangelion. Asuka fights nine mass-produced Eva units, each with weapons that can cleave straight through her nigh-impenetrable AT Field. Asuka's Eva, meanwhile, has only a Progressive Knife and three minutes of battery power. In that timespan, Asuka disables or destroys every last one. Only to find out that they were Only Mostly Dead, and promptly get her ass kicked. Whoops.
- Mahou Sensei Negima has two resident Obvious Ninjas, one plays this straight the other subverts it slightly. Inugami Kotaro can't create Shadow Clones of equal power to himself (and his cap was seven in the Tournament sub-arc). However Boobs Of Steel Kaede with her Sixteen Shadow Clones CAN... but not at full count. When she has four shadow clones they are all equal to her alone. Proving with Training at least in Negima you can bypass this trope.
- In Berserk, Apostles were a major threat early in the series, with Guts needing to fight with everything he had to kill one, and Guts probably would have died fighting the Count if the Count's daughter hadn't conveniently burst into the room for Guts to use as a hostage. Now that all the Apostles in the world are serving Griffith, they've been demoted to Elite Mooks. Justified, since Guts has the Berserker's Armor, which makes him much stronger and brings out his Superpowered Evil Side.
- {{Yu-Gi-Oh! GX}} sometimes shows a character (usually Manjoume/Chazz) defeat several duelists at once offscreen. In Manjoume's case, apparently it's his coattails of doom that makes him elite enough to do this.
- The Type-3 Gadget Drones in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, which slapped Elio around for most of the fight when there was only one of them during the first mission, but gets taken out by the Forwards in seconds when they come in groups in later missions. Justified since said Forwards were going through Nanoha's Training From Hell every single day.
Film
- Batman Begins skirts the edge of this trope. Bruce Wayne only fights one member of the League of Shadows during his escape (all the others were too busy dodging explosions); still, one might wonder how Bruce was the only ninja to escape the exploding dojo. (The answer: he wasn't.) When he takes up the Batman mantle officially, he is able hold his own against four ninjas at once (and larger numbers of Falcone's gangsters, for that matter, but they're hardly "elite").
- It should be considered, though, that Batman does have the best body armor and equipment that money can buy, which should give him an extra edge.
- In the Matrix trilogy, in the famous Burly Brawl scene from Matrix Reloaded, Neo is able to manhandle (though not without some difficulty) dozens, if not hundreds, of Smith copies, yet in Matrix Revolutions, which takes place chronologically perhaps a day or so later, he is completely beaten by just a single Smith. And this little segment of dialogue, taken in the context of this trope, shows Smith to be quite Genre Savvy when the need calls for it.
Neo: It ends tonight.
Smith: I know it does; I've seen it. I know how it ends. That's why the rest of me are gonna sit back and enjoy the show, because we already know that I'm the one that beats you.
- Let's not forget that it's said in the movie that Smith and Neo are linked in a way that they are always as powerful as the other. So all the Smiths involved in the fight are automatically as powerful as neo combined, even if it's one. Making this a literal application of this rule in the canon.
- The list just wouldn't be complete without robots. In I, Robot, Will Smith's character Spooner is able to survive and utterly destroy two massive truckloads worth of corrupted robots during the highway sequence, but the scene gets really serious when he realizes that there is one (albeit handicapped) robot leftover.
- Though it should be noted, those two truckloads of robots were dispatched with a combination of gunplay and fancy vehicular maneuvers. For the last one, he was unarmed and his car flipped on its side.
- No ninjas or robots, but still. How can this trope not bring The Princess Bride to mind?
Fezzik: I just figured out why you would give me so much trouble.
Westley: Why is that, do you think?
Fezzik: Well, I haven't fought just one person for so long... I've been specializing in groups, fighting gangs for local charities... that kind of thing.
Westley: Why should that make such a difference?
Fezzik: You see, you use different moves when you're fighting half a dozen people than when you only have to worry about one.
- Probably the only time in Star Wars that the Imperial Stormtroopers were at all capable was when fighting a large number of rebel troops - both in the opening scene of "A New Hope", and in the invasion of Hoth in "The Empire Strikes Back". After that, when they were just fighting Luke, Han, Chewie, and Leia, they became the infamously poor marksmen they are remembered as. Ewoks count as heroes in this example.
- The one time the Jedi are killed by non-Sith and non-betrayal by own troops in the films is the Battle of Geonosis of Attack of the Clones, because there are 215 Jedi (179 die). Though the one shot by Jango Fett doesn't count.
- Also, take the scene in Revenge of the Sith where Mace Windu and 3 other Jedi are attempting to arrest Palpatine. Palpatine instantly kills the first Jedi, then kills the second right after. The third Jedi survives for maybe 5 more seconds before also getting killed. Now that there is one more Jedi left, he manages to overpower Palpatine after a epic battle.
- Averted in the Alien quadrilogy, where characters trapped with only one Xenomorph always have the misfortune to be practically unarmed at the same time.
- In Kill Bill Volume 1, Black Mamba is able to slice through the numerous Crazy 88 members like butter with her superior katana, but displayed trouble whenever the General poked his bald head in at various points during the scuffle.
- In Scarface, Tony Montana can gun down hordes of thugs, but a lone chainsaw-user proves a great threat and a single shotgun-toting assassin finally kills him.
- In Starship Troopers the bugs are incredibly strong when there's just one or two of them in the screen. When the troopers are defending the fortress, they can just spray down hordes of the same bugs with the same rifles that didn't work before.
- In The One, it is quite literally a law of the multiverse that "power" is spread between the different incarnations of a person across universes, and criminal abuse of this has naturally ensued. The Big Bad and sort-of Evil Twin to the hero partakes in killing off their "other selves", such that by the final fight both are superhumanly capable.
- Sounds a lot like Highlander when put that way. Which fits the trope, naturally.
- Very averted in the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. Raphael fights a horde of mooks alone... and is savagely beaten, thrown through a skylight (averting the soft glass trope), and spends the next quarter of the movie recovering.
- In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indy fairly easily takes out half a dozen Nazis on the truck transporting the Ark. But he nearly gets killed when there's just one Nazi left.
- In Big Trouble In Little China, the three sorceror-ninja henchmen of the sorceror-ninja Big Bad are almost exactly as tough together as each is separately.
Literature
Live Action TV
- Buffyverse vampires were particularly subject to this trope. Individual vampires could be fairly respectable opponents, though they still had a bad track record of getting one-stab killed after Season 1. Whenever vampires gathered in groups, they were cannon fodder. One just hopes they don't have problems with splinters.
- Particularly egregious in the final season, where one Turok-Han 'uber-vamp' was a nearly unstoppable force, very narrowly beaten by the Slayer after several victories. In the finale, however, the Scoobies went up against an army of them, and Xander, Anya, and the slayers-still-in-training were taking hundreds of them down easily, albeit with the One Girl in all the world who will be Chosen becoming the Many Girls thanks to a timely spell by Willow, and not without several casualties, including multiple Potential Slayers, and Anya.
- In the DVD commentary, Joss Whedon points out that this was a conscious decision, claiming that "they couldn't all be as hard to beat as the first one," since that would make the last fight unwinnable. No in-universe explanation is given, simply the remark that storytelling is more important than an internally-consistent canon.
Nothing else left to do but recite the Mantra and shrug it off. Which is more evidence that Whedon is not always the genius people sometimes think he is.
- In Doctor Who, the amount of danger presented by the Daleks seems to always be inversely proportional to the number of Daleks present.
- In Super Sentai and Power Rangers there are many instances of a monster beating up an entire team of Rangers, only to be defeated by a single Ranger in a sufficiently climactic battle.
- The enemy grunts are an exception, though. They are pushovers in small or moderate numbers, but huge hordes of them occasionally manage to overpower the Rangers (happens especially in season finales).
- Also, early seasons would sometimes feature battles with multiple resurrected monsters, who would usually go down with just one or two hits. Eventually subverted in the third season premiere where a villain and four resurrected monsters, all giant sized, tear the Megazord to pieces.
- Babylon 5 presents a rare good-guy example of this: when there's only one White Star, it's unstoppable. Once there's a fleet, they start getting taken down by mid-level enemies, often with no Vorlon or Shadow support.
- This is especially bad since the White Stars are meant to be able to learn from each hit it takes, so that the armour gets stronger after every battle. Even as late as the fourth series, the White Stars continued to get weaker: in Series 3, it takes 3 White Stars to destroy a Shadow warship( after a telepath has jammed it), but by the battle of Proxima 3, 4 White Stars are needed to deal with a single Earth destroyer, an incredibly simpler ship with far less firepower (albeit with the ability to manoeuvre ), which Sheridan stated was weaker than The White Star.
- Kamen Rider Den-O: The hordes of ninja in the movie Ore Tanjou suffer so badly from this that even the ridiculously inept protagonist Ryoutarou can hold his own against one.
Video Games
- Bad Dudes Versus Dragon Ninja. Armies of brightly dressed Highly Visible Ninja rush at the one (or two) good guys in broad daylight then each one falls down (and vanishes) after being struck a single blow (in fact in the case of the chi punch several ninja can be killed by the same blow).
- A noted problem with Metal Gear Solid 2: fighting thirty Metal Gears is significantly less dramatic than the usual finale of fighting one, because of the greatly reduced significance of each foe; in fact, Metal Gear RAY's require only a handful of missiles to destroy, while their REX predecessor (Which they were designed specifically to be able to defeat) required some 20-30 of those missiles and a lone ninja (himself taking full advantage of this very trope) to perform a Heroic Sacrifice. This may be justified, as was well established that the Metal Gears involved in that fight were designed to be cheap, mass-produced, and be piloted by an AI.
- No ninjas or robots either and applying to main characters, but still: In Devil May Cry 3, Dante or Vergil alone can use their full powers in the first phase of the fight against Arkham. When the second phase rolls in, bringing Vergil or Dante (respectively according to character used) with it, the player loses his Style-based moves and Devil Trigger transformation, while the interloper also cannot fight at full power.
- Grand Theft Auto games doubly subverts the hell out of this. First subversion is that the only difference between you and any other NPC is your weaponry and armor. If you take all else equal, expect some serious asskicking by the enemies if they come in swarms, since, well, you're alone. Particularly noticeable in some The War Sequence missions. Double Subversion comes when you do amass enough weaponry to become a One Man Army. To take that further, GTA: San Andreas has the respect system that allows you to literally bring in your own army for combat to even up the odds.
- In Spider-Man: The Game of The Movie, one level relies heavily on stealth, and if you are spotted or trip an alarm it brings out a couple Super Soldiers, giant robots that are extremely formidable opponents. Even one is a handful, and if you run into more than one, your only hope is to run and hide. A couple levels later you have to fight your way through dozens of Super Soldiers, which are notably easier to get past.
- Game example with robots: in Mega Man, the mass-produced Joes are basically Arm Cannon fodder. Only the unique Robot Masters are a challenge.
- Gemini Man (Mega Man 3) himself follows this trope. He starts the battle by doubling himself, and only attacks with a weak blaster (in response to your fire) and by Collision Damage. Only when you destroy the clone does he break out the Gemini Laser.
- Played very straight in Super Smash Bros. and sequels. Any level with "Team <character>" or the Fighting Alloys lets you fling them off the screen with one solid hit. Even heavy characters like Bowser blast off when part of a team. Meanwhile, some stages can give you hell with just 1-3 opponents and even with the very occasional ally.
- But brutally, BRUTALLY subverted in the well-named Cruel Melee/Cruel Brawl.
- A mission in the single player Star Wars Battlefront 2 has you as a single clone trooper among many going up against a horde of Jedi. This troper wonders if this was meant to be some kind of cosmic and cruel irony.
- Another Star Wars example, in Republic Commando, when Delta Squad (essentially the ninjas of the Clone Wars) splits up to take down the Core Ship on Geonosis, Delta-38 (the player's character) lampshades this trope, almost making it into a Crowning Moment Of Awesome:
Delta 38: Alone against all these droids? Heh, they don't stand a chance.
- Lampshaded with dark hilarity at the end of Max Payne. As he continues to gun down the Big Bad's Killer Suits in her penthouse suite, the PA system crackles to life:
Big Bad: What do you mean 'he's unstoppable'? You are superior to him in every way that counts. You are better trained, better equipped, and you outnumber him at least twenty-to-one. Do. Your. Job.
- Half-Life 2 has a similar scene, where the Big Bad expresses his shock to his Faceless Goons that they, "the best humanity has to offer", are unable to stop or apprehend Gordon Freeman, a theoretical physicist.
- Ninja Gaiden: Ryu, a lone ninja, can take on a seemingly endless horde of ninjas, demons, and fiends of all sizes and colors - and the endless hordes of ninja that come after him can barely touch him.
- Mass Effect actually averts this in the backstory. The neural network of the robotic Geth is made in such a way that they are actually more powerfull when fighting in groups. In game, this is shown by having the Elite Mooks boost the stats of their nearby allies.
- City Of Heroes actually has this as a player's power. The more enemies that are nearby (Capped at 10 to balance things a little), the stronger a character possessing such a power will be in battle against all of the enemies. Also carries over to a few of the optional powers accessable to anyone, which can improve offense, defense or other stats across a whole team.
- To be specific, the powers that do this come in two types. Toggle powers that can be kept on for entire battles like "Invincibility" (increases your defense and accuracy for each foe within meelee range), "Rise to the Challenge" (increases your health regeneration rate for each foe within meelee range and decreases their accuracy). Then there are click powers that give a temporary buff with it's strength based on how many enemies it hits at the time it is fired like "Eclipse" (Resistance), "Energy Absorption" (Defense), "Power Sink"/"Energy Drain"/"Consume"/"Dark Consumption" (Endurance Refill), "Dark Regeneration" (Health Refill), and "Soul Drain"/"Sunless Mire" (Accuracy and Damage buff).
- The second PSP installment of the Ratchet and Clank series, Secret Agent Clank, has a skill point challenge that references this trope. Titled "Inverse Ninja Law", it requires you to defeat 99 ninja mooks during a boss fight where they spawn endlessly, far, far more than you need to defeat to beat the level.
Webcomics
Western Animation
- In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the four ninja turtles are easily able to defeat the dozens of goons from The Foot that they face. Conversely, the four ninja turtles have great difficulty facing off against Shredder (one ninja).
- Of course Shredder is the leader of the Foot clan and is known to be a far better fighter than his minions.
- Justice League made active use of the trope in its early seasons. The first instance was when they faced the robot Manhunters sent to capture John Stewart. The team (including Supes) is beaten soundly until Lantern gives himself up. But by the next episode, they're able to tear through an army of them like tissue paper.
- This was solved to a point when the series switched over to Unlimited and the League was given its own personal army. The new team then proceeded to take on fearsome tasks that required multiple individuals, such as when they faced the Dark Heart, a nanotechnology being that could multiply itself exponentially.
- However, it was quickly flipped over once more when the team took on Amazo, an android that took down every Leaguer in existence without breaking an artificial sweat. Though this isn't that unbelievable when you consider that AMAZO is always getting stronger and had already left earth a while ago (hell, in that same story he teleported an entire planet just to get it out of his way and brought it back as soon as someone asked).
- Teen Titans is possibly the crowned king of this trope, providing an on point illustration of it about every other episode using a wide variety of monsters and Mecha Mooks. Standard example: the villain of the week summons a monster or robot or something. With much struggle and an elongated fight sequence, the Titans are either just barly able to deat the adversary or make their retreat. Later on in the episode, the villain tries the same trick again, but decides to spice it up a bit by either making the goon 20 times larger or replicating it to form a small army. Despite the blatantly increased odds, the Titans are still able to defeat the both the goons and the Villain Of The Week with half the sweat.
- In an episode of Lilo And Stitch The Series, the Monster Of The Week was able to duplicate anything. However, the qualities of anything it duplicated were divided accordingly (i.e. it could duplicate a 100-watt lightbulb to produce 2 50-watt bulbs). Near the end of the episode, Lilo tricks Gantu into making 100 of each of his combat experiments, making them so weak they're easily defeated.
- In Xiaolin Showdown, one of the Shen Gong Wu, the Ring of Nine Dragons, can make duplicates of the user, but the duplicates get less competent the more are made.
- On Jackie Chan Adventures, whether Jackie had to fight five of the Shadowkhan or five hundred, they would always take exactly the same amount of effort to dispatch.
- In the CGI cartoon Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles, after establishing a base on the jungle world of Tesca Nemerosa, the Roughnecks encounter a 'prototype' Spider Bug that proceeds to kidnap the entire squad one by one with consummate ease, until eventually only two remain uncaptured. When they finally confront it in a suitably epic battle, it takes a barrage of automatic rifle fire and a plummet onto stalagmites to defeat it. Next episode, they're fighting Spider Bugs by the dozens, in combination with the more conventional Bugs, and having little trouble holding their own.
- Subverted in the Spectacular Spiderman episode "Group Therapy". The Sinister Six beat the crap out of Spiderman at first and the only reason he beat them was because he had the Symbiode suit on.
Comic Books
- Occurs whenever multiple villains team up to crush the hero. Despite how fearsome there are individually, especially during their debut, they are taken down by the hero in a fraction of the time and effort it originally took. Prime example being the Sinister Six of early Spider-Man.
- Justified when Spidey is baiting the Vulture in the Secret of the Sinister Six novel, claiming that's because he can't afford to hold back when he's facing all six of them.
- The Hand, a group of elite ninja in Marvel comic books, is almost nothing but cannon fodder. The willingness to die seems to be more important in membership consideration than skill, considering how many hundreds (perhaps thousands) of these guys characters like Wolverine and Elektra have waded through. These were, at least in part, the inspiration for the Foot Clan, above.
- Justified by the Wolverine comic "...[the mooks] have to be careful they don't chop one of their own by mistake. While I can hit anyone I please."
- The Punisher - 'nuff said.
- One Flash storyline had a Speed Force enhanced bunch of Ninja going up against various Flashes and other speedsters. They realized almost too late that the more ninja they took out of the action, the faster the others were getting...
- Played with in a recent Runaways comic where Kingpin faces the heroes with an army of Ninjas (more Ninjas then usual, according to one kid). During the fight, Molly (a superstrong girl who was very upset for punching Punisher, who had no powers to protect him, and had sworn off fighting anyone with powers) askes if Ninjas had powers so she could fight them. She is given the answer, that, because they were ninjas, they counted as double, the implication being that heroes in the Marvel universe cut loose when fighting Ninjas.
Table top
- 4th edition D&D introduced the "minion" template which is used by the DM solely to make normally threatening monsters cannon fodder for the P Cs to tear through like tissue paper.
- Operates in full force in Warhammer 40000, particularly with Space Marines.
Professional Wrestling
- This trope is used in pro wrestling quite often in its regular form, but it also takes on other forms. For example, in a match where there can be several pinfalls and the winner is determined either by a tally of pinfalls (Iron Man Match) or by who got the last pinfall (Championship Scramble, 24/7 hardcore title match), you can guarantee that pinfalls will be much more frequent and much easier to come by than in a match where one pinfall equals victory. Likewise in older Survivor Series team elimination matches where team members would be pinned and eliminated by fairly weak moves, such as clotheslines, that would never end a one-on-one match.
- This was, however, averted in the famous Bret Hart vs. Shawn Michaels Iron Man match, in which no pinfalls were scored in the entire hour and they had to go into overtime. In fact, since most Iron Man matches are between two very skilled wrestlers who have the ability to make a match exciting for a whole hour, they usually manage to make it believable, thus averting the trope. It still happens in lesser "multiple pinfall" matches, though.
Truth In Television
- When you think about it, this trope sort of makes sense when taken literally. Ninjas were assassins, not infantrymen. Their biggest asset was stealth, not strength (that would be a Samurai, the ninja's biggest rival). One ninja in a good hiding spot would be much deadlier than 10 or so in an open field where they could be shot down in droves by a few trained marksmen who knew where to aim.
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